This double album compilation of Irish
folk and traditional music is “available exclusively through HMV stores”, so
those who shop elsewhere will be spared any form of temptation.

Ignoring
just about every major musical figure or band in the recorded history of Irish
music (except De Dannan, Stockton’s Wing, Tommy Makem, The Dubliners, the
over-compiled Clannad, and a rock-period Paul Brady), this gormless collection
ranges from the saccharine efforts of the Fureys & Davey Arthur to the very
Irish Steve Earle and Carter Burwell, taking in such non-entities as
MacMurrough, Sackville Folk and Secret Garden, and the quasi-psychedelic Dr.
Strangely Strange.

Extend your
bargepoles and avoid!

This review
by Geoff Wallis was originally written for Songlines magazine – www.songlines.co.uk.